To the editor:
This letter is a response to your article on the traffic jam in the morning in front of the Middle School.
The reason that no one is riding the bus and everyone is getting rides in the morning is because most of those kids parents don’t want them on the bus with high schoolers.
Most of those kids are suspended off of the bus for really ridiculous reasons. Those buses sit in the Intermediate School parking lot for 20 minutes before letting the students off and on the bus.
After school, the middle and high school students have to sit and wait, and no one has the patience for that. I am a student at the high school and I have been suspended off of the bus many times before, and was in the same situation as those kids are. It is not because the parents are on their way to work. Those kids all want to avoid the bus drivers, or the older kids on the bus.
You should consider interviewing some of the parents and students in the morning, see what they have to say, because I guarantee you will get the same story from them. How many parents do you think go to work in their pajamas, let alone going north towards Flint? The people at the bus garage don’t know what goes on on those buses, or how those bus drivers really act towards the kids. That is why most students force their parents to drive them to school, because they are so fed up with the bus rides, and the drivers? attitudes.
My mother is friends with a bus driver, and we hear the same stories all the time. We also talk with people about this issue, and we all suggest that there be separate buses for intermediate/middle school, and high school. That would solve a lot of the problems, such as 5th graders riding on the bus two hours a day with senior high students.
Maybe you should take this letter into consideration, or maybe all the parents should attend the next board of education meeting, March 8th, 2004 at 6:30 p.m.
Gabrielle Glowacki
Goodrich High School student